Shavuot
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40 free Shavuot trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Shavuot is the quietest of Judaism's great pilgrimage festivals and, for a holiday with so few fixed rituals, one of the richest in custom. It arrives fifty days after Passover, began as a farmers' festival in the Land of Israel, and came to mark the moment the Torah was given at Mount Sinai. This quiz covers both sides of the holiday. There are questions on its names and its place in the Hebrew calendar, the offerings once carried to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the synagogue readings and poems heard on the day. Others cover the Book of Ruth and its characters, the tradition of studying through the night, the dairy dishes on the table and the flowers in the sanctuary, along with a few surprising customs from Jewish communities around the world. It works for a holiday meal, a religious school class, a study-night break or a printable round for the family table. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the easy questions still teach something and the harder ones settle an argument.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Historians have suggested the spread of which drink through the Ottoman Empire made all-night Shavuot study popular?
Coffee
Coffee gave kabbalists and their followers a way to stay alert until sunrise, when the night of Torah study gives way to morning prayers.
Q 02Which dessert is a signature Shavuot dish in Ashkenazi Jewish homes, often served at the festival's daytime meal?
Cheesecake
Cheesecake leads a dairy menu with several explanations, one being that the Israelites, newly bound by kosher slaughter laws, had no meat ready to eat.
Q 03A midrash says all-night Shavuot study makes up for the Israelites doing what on the morning the Torah was given?
Oversleeping
Oversleeping is the charge: the Israelites turned in early to be rested for the great day and had to be woken, with God already waiting on the mountain.
Q 04Besides crops and machinery, what do many Israeli kibbutzim show off to the community at Shavuot harvest festivals?
The year's babies
The year's babies are paraded with the produce, because secular kibbutzim recast Shavuot as a celebration of everything the community achieved in twelve months.
Q 05Shavuot falls 50 days after Passover begins; the festival's Hebrew name is the plural of the word for what?
Weeks
Weeks is the meaning, because the Torah gives the festival no calendar date, only an instruction to mark off seven of them after Passover.
Q 06Which biblical king, a great-grandson of Ruth, is traditionally said to have been born and to have died on Shavuot?
David
David is remembered on Shavuot with psalms and a memorial candle, and his family tree closes the Book of Ruth that is read on the festival.
Q 07Jewish mystical tradition pictures the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai on Shavuot as which kind of ceremony?
A wedding
A wedding, with God as groom, Israel as bride and the Torah as the marriage contract; some synagogues dress the reading platform as a bridal canopy.
Q 08Which famous passage from Exodus is read aloud from the Torah scroll in synagogues on the first morning of Shavuot?
The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments are read because rabbinic tradition dates the revelation at Sinai to this day, though the Bible itself never links the festival to it.
Q 09Which Christian festival, described in the Acts of the Apostles, shares its Greek name with the Jewish Shavuot?
Pentecost
Pentecost means fiftieth, the name Greek-speaking Jews gave Shavuot, and Acts sets the first Christian one in Jerusalem on that very festival.
Q 10In the Hebrew Bible, Shavuot is the festival that marks which crop's harvest in the Land of Israel?
Wheat
Wheat ripened last of the grains, so Shavuot closed a harvest season that had opened with barley at Passover.
Q 11In the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, which widowed mother-in-law does Ruth refuse to abandon?
Naomi
Naomi had lost her husband and both sons in a foreign land, and urged her daughters-in-law to go back to their own families.
Q 12Which landowner, a relative of her late husband's family, does Ruth marry in the biblical book read on Shavuot?
Boaz
Boaz first notices Ruth working in his field and praises her loyalty, and their son Obed went on to be the grandfather of a king.
Q 13The Book of Ruth, read in synagogues on Shavuot, is set mainly in which Judean town at harvest time?
Bethlehem
Bethlehem is the ancestral home the two widows return to, arriving just as the barley harvest begins.
Q 21Which offering, called bikkurim in Hebrew, could farmers start bringing to the Jerusalem Temple on Shavuot?
First fruits
First fruits gave Shavuot one of its biblical names, and each farmer recited a set declaration on handing them to the priest.
Q 22The offerings farmers brought from Shavuot onward came only from the Seven Species; which crop is one of them?
Pomegranates
Pomegranates sit on the list in Deuteronomy beside figs, grapes, olives, dates and two grains, and the whole set is traditionally eaten at Shavuot.
Q 23The two loaves offered in the Temple on Shavuot were unusual among grain offerings because they contained what?
Leaven
Leaven was rare in Temple sacrifices, which makes the Shavuot loaves a deliberate counterpoint to the unleavened bread of Passover.
Q 14Shavuot and Passover are two of Judaism's Three Pilgrimage Festivals; which autumn festival is the third?
Sukkot
Sukkot completes the trio on which ancient Israelites travelled to the Temple in Jerusalem, each festival tied to a different harvest.
Q 15Which Jerusalem holy site drew more than 200,000 Jews on Shavuot 1967, days after Israel captured the Old City?
Western Wall
Western Wall access had been closed to Jews since 1948, so the Shavuot crowd was the first mass Jewish pilgrimage there in nineteen years.
Q 16Which rolled pancakes filled with sweetened cheese are an Ashkenazi Jewish favourite served on Shavuot?
Blintzes
Blintzes are among the dishes Jewish cooks adopted from their Christian neighbours, and their name comes through Yiddish from a Slavic word for a pancake.
Q 17Which Shavuot custom did the Vilna Gaon cancel, saying it too closely resembled Christian holiday practice?
Decorating with trees
Decorating with trees was dropped by his followers, but flowers and branches remain common, recalling a legend that Mount Sinai bloomed for the giving of the Torah.
Q 18The Hebrew word for milk has a numerical value matching which stretch of time Moses spent on Mount Sinai?
Forty days
Forty days and nights is how long he stayed before bringing down the Torah, and the match is one of several reasons given for Shavuot's dairy meals.
Q 19Which Jewish movement made Shavuot the day for teenagers' confirmation ceremonies, held before the open Torah ark?
Reform
Reform Judaism created confirmation in the 1800s, loosely modelled on the church rite, and tied it to Shavuot as the day Israel accepted the Torah.
Q 20Shavuot falls on the sixth day of which Hebrew month, the third starting from the spring month of Nisan?
Sivan
Sivan's sixth day is when most Talmudic sages placed the giving of the Torah, though Rabbi Jose ben Halafta argued for the seventh.
Q 24In a midrash retold on Shavuot, whom does God accept as guarantors that the Torah will be kept?
Their children
Their children stand surety for the Torah's future in the story, which is why many parents make a point of bringing youngsters to hear the Shavuot reading.
Q 25Ruth, whose story is read on Shavuot, is held up in Jewish tradition as the model of which religious act?
Converting to Judaism
Converting to Judaism is how the rabbis read her pledge to her mother-in-law, and several laws for accepting newcomers are drawn from its wording.
Q 26Ruth, the heroine of the biblical book read on Shavuot, came from which neighbouring kingdom of ancient Israel?
Moab
Moab is where a family from Judah had settled and where both of its sons married local women, one of them Ruth.
Q 27In the Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, how does Ruth find food for herself and her mother-in-law?
Gleaning
Gleaning meant gathering what the harvesters left behind, and it is how Ruth comes to spend the rest of the season working a kinsman's land.
Q 28Akdamut, a 90-line poem chanted in Ashkenazi synagogues on Shavuot morning, is written in which language?
Aramaic
Aramaic was once used to translate each verse of the Torah reading aloud, and the poem began as an introduction to that running translation.
Q 29Which memorial prayer for the dead do Ashkenazi synagogues recite on Shavuot and on three other holidays each year?
Yizkor
Yizkor follows the Torah reading, and where Shavuot runs two days it waits for the second; Yom Kippur and the end of Passover have it too.
Q 30Which set of praise psalms, Psalms 113 to 118, is recited in full in synagogue on the morning of Shavuot?
Hallel
Hallel is sung complete on Shavuot, whereas on the later days of Passover a shortened version drops parts of two psalms.